Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to computer-aided design (CAD) and, more specifically, to a volume-preserving smoothing brush used to edit a three-dimensional (3D) object.
Description of the Related Art
Many CAD programs, such as 3D surface-sculpting systems, allow a user to edit a 3D object using a set of brushes, where each brush is metaphorically similar to paint-brush tools used in an image editor such as Adobe® Photoshop®. A 3D brush has an area-of-application, i.e., the area of the 3D object within the boundary of the 3D brush, and applies some operation within the area. In addition to performing painting operations, 3D brushes may also be used to modify the shape of the 3D object.
One conventional type of 3D brush is the smoothing brush, which smoothes out details in the underlying surface by changing positions of vertices of a mesh that represents the 3D object. The effect of the conventional smoothing brush is to shrink or flatten the brushed area, thereby reducing the volume of the smoothed 3D object compared with the original 3D object.
What is needed in the art are improved techniques for computing updated positions of vertices of a 3D mesh when a smoothing brush is applied to the 3D mesh and the volume of the 3D mesh is reduced.